This fall, as a complement to its existing BS in environmental geoscience, Boston College is unveiling a new major in environmental studies. The major, which is interdisciplinary, will lead to a bachelor of arts degree. Until now, undergraduates have pursued environmental studies only as minor—with about 50 graduates per year—taking courses from the social sciences (e.g., “Consumption and Sustainability” in sociology), the natural sciences (“Chemistry and Society,” “The Genetic Century”), and the humanities (“American Nature Writing,” “The Bible and Ecology”). The earth and environmental sciences department (EES), known until 2010 as the geology and geophysics department, started offering the BS environmental major during the 1987–88 academic year and the BA minor in 1996.

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In all, 10 Arts and Sciences departments, the Lynch School of Education, Carroll School of Management, Connell School of Nursing, and Law School will contribute more than 90 courses—most preexisting, some new—to the curriculum.

Citing the example of climate change, program director Noah Snyder says the decision to introduce the BA reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of global environmental issues. “[Global warming] is not controversial science”—at least not among scientists, says the EES associate professor—”but what is and should be controversial is what we’re going to do about this, as a society.” Addressing that question, he says, will involve multiple disciplines debating the economic, scientific, and social effects of potential policy changes.

Environmental studies programs yielding the BA have been around higher education for a couple of decades, says Snyder, a geologist. The major has materialized now at Boston College for a number of reasons. “First, we have the expertise,” says Snyder, pointing to the accrual of faculty with environmentally focused research in disciplines ranging from anthropology to geology to theology. “Second, our students want it,” he says, relating that many undergraduates with environmental studies minors have indicated they would rather be majors. Snyder ticks off other reasons, including increased career opportunities in fields such as green technology, environmental law, and climate change mitigation, and he notes U.S. News & World Report‘s 2012 designation of environmental studies as one of nine “new college majors with a future.” University Provost David Quigley, who approved the initiative in January 2014, says the program is a “well-timed” addition to the school’s other interdisciplinary majors, which include international studies and Islamic civilization and societies, and is part of a growing focus on interdisciplinary studies at Boston College.

The environmental studies BA program is starting off with 15 students, all sophomores. Requirements include a one-credit seminar taught by Snyder and described by him as “an introduction to the intellectual pursuit of environmental studies,” with assigned readings in classic texts such as Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, and Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change; eight credits (out of 43 altogether) from lab-based science courses such as EES offerings “Water Resources” and “Ecosystems”; and a two-semester senior research seminar. Also required is a concentration in a discipline (political science, say) or in a theme (food and water sustainability; or climate change and societal adaptation). Snyder anticipates adding two additional themes: environmental justice; and natural hazards and disasters.

Holly Vande Wall, a lecturer in philosophy, was part of the nine-member working group that developed the new major. Since 2010 she has taught “Environmental Ethics,” and close to half of her students, she says, have been environmental studies minors interested in a social sciences or humanities approach. But, she adds, an equal number are environmental geosciences students. Environmental education “almost demands that you ask the questions about human responsibility toward nonhuman life,” Vande Wall says, “no matter how deep you are in the lab.”